“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The so-called stream of consciousness is simply that — one small stream of thoughts, images, and impressions — that is part of a much deeper river of consciousness that represents your own far greater existence and experience. You spend all your time examining this one small stream, so that you become hypnotized by its flow, and entranced by its motion. Simultaneously these other streams of perception and consciousness go by without your notice, yet they are very much a part of you, and they represent quite valid aspects, events, actions, emotions with which you are also involved in other layers of reality.

(9:35.) You are as actively and vividly concerned in these realities as you are in the one in which your main attention is now focused. Now, as you are merely concerned with your physical body and physical self as a rule, you give your attention to the stream of consciousness that seems to deal with it. These other streams of consciousness, however, are connected with other self-forms that you do not perceive. The body, in other words, is simply one manifestation of what you are in one reality, but in these other realities you have other forms.

“You” are not divorced from these other streams of consciousness in any basic way; only your focus of attention closes you off from them, and from the events in which they are involved. If you think of your stream of consciousness as transparent, however, then you can learn to look through and beneath it to others that lie in other beds of reality. You can also learn to rise above your present stream of consciousness and perceive others that run, for analogy’s sake, parallel. The point is that you are only limited to the self you know if you think that you are, and if you do not realize that that self is far from your entire identity.

Now often you tune into these other streams of consciousness without realizing that you have done so — for again, they are a part of the same river of your identity. All are therefore connected.

Any creative work involves you in a cooperative process in which you learn to dip into these other streams of consciousness, and come up with a perception that has far more dimensions than one arising from the one narrow, usual stream of consciousness that you know. Great creativity is then multidimensional for this reason. Its origin is not from one reality, but from many, and it is tinged with the multiplicity of that origin.

Now in moments of solitude you may become aware of some of these other streams of consciousness. You may at times for example, hear words, or see images that appear out of context with your own thoughts. According to your education, beliefs, and background you may interpret these in any number of ways. For that matter, they may originate from several sources. On many occasions, however, you have inadvertently tuned in on one of your other streams of consciousness, opened momentarily a channel to those other levels of reality in which other portions of you dwell.

Some of these may involve the thoughts of what you would call a reincarnational self, focused in another period of history as you know it. You may instead, “pick up” an event in which a probable self is involved, according to your inclination, your psychic suppleness, your curiosity, your desire for knowledge. In other words, you may become aware of a far greater reality than you now know, use abilities that you do not realize you possess, know beyond all doubt that your own consciousness and identity is independent of the world in which you now focus your primary attention. If all of that were not true, I would not be writing this book and you would not be reading it.

In this final version the basic experience is converted as nearly as possible into physical terms. It is therefore distorted. This final touching-up process is not done by deeper layers of the self however, but is much more nearly a conscious process than you realize.

One small point might explain what I mean here. If you do not want to remember a particular dream, you yourself censor the memory on levels quite close to consciousness. Often you can even catch yourself in the act of purposely dropping the memory of a dream. The touching-up process occurs almost at this same level, though not quite.

I do not want to minimize the importance of your state of consciousness; as, for example, you read this book. Presumably you are awake, but in many ways when you are awake, you are resting far more than you are in your so-called unconscious nightly state. Then to a larger extent you realize your own reality, and are free to use abilities that in the daytime you ignore or deny.

(10:26.) At a very simple level, for example, your consciousness leaves your body often in the sleep state. You communicate with people in other levels of reality that you have known, but far beyond this, you creatively maintain and revitalize your physical image. You process daily experience, project it into what you think of as the future, choose from an infinity of probable events those you will make physical, and begin the mental and psychic processes that will bring them into the world of substance.

(10:35.) The seeming division is not arbitrary, or forced upon you. It is simply caused by your present stage of development, and it does vary. Many people take excursions into other realities — swim, so to speak, through other streams of consciousness as a part of their normal waking lives. Sometimes strange fish pop up in those waters!

Now I am obviously such a one in your terms, swimming up through other dimensions of reality and observing a dimension of existence that is yours rather than my own. There are, therefore, channels that exist between all these streams of consciousness, all these symbolic rivers of psychological and psychic experience, and there are journeys that can be made from my dimension as well as yours.

Now initially Ruburt and Joseph and I were a part of the same entity, or overall identity, and so symbolically speaking, there are psychic currents that unite us. All of these merge into what has often been compared to as an ocean of consciousness, a well from which all actuality springs. Start with any one consciousness, and theoretically you will find all others.